Ayman al-Zawahri (AP file photo/Al Jazeera)

Everyone has heard about Osama bin Laden. But what do we know about the people who surround him, the shadowy figures who help run the al-Qaeda network. There's one man who always seems to be at bin Laden's side, the man some believe was the true mastermind behind the September 11th attacks.

In one of Cairo's pleasant middle-class neighbourhoods, a rather ordinary apartment building has an extraordinary history. Among the doctors and dentists who live here is the family home of Ayman al-Zawahri. The two-storey apartment is tightly shuttered though Ayman's sister still lives here.

Second most wanted

Ayman al-Zawahri is the Egyptian who appears on terrorism lists as a second most wanted man in the world. He's the man who's now often in Afghanistan. He's the man who is working with Osama bin Laden.

For his cousin, Omar Azam, and uncle Mafous, Ayman was a gentle young man.

"He disliked boxing. He disliked those sorts of sports. And he likes to read poetry, and he writes poetry," Mafous says.

He may be a poet to his family, but to the United States, he's the embodiment of evil. The bespectacled al-Zawahri is always at the right hand of bin Laden. And many say he is actually the brains in the operation.

Ayman al-Zawahri was a surgeon from a traditional middle-class family. They were well connected everywhere from the mosque to the government. And they were highly respected throughout Cairo's society.

So how does a doctor with every possible advantage end up as the partner with Osama bin Laden in a campaign to kill Americans?

The story of Ayman al-Zawahri is the story of how Islamic militants have become such a powerful force here in Egypt. Ayman al-Zawahri was born on June 19,1951, just a year before the revolution that put an Egyptian in charge of the country for the first time. Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in a bloodless coup that got rid of the British-backed monarchy.

Muslim Brotherhood

Among the swelling masses of support was the radical Muslim Brotherhood. It hoped Nasser would make an Islamic state. Nasser turned instead to socialism. The al-Zawahri family was well established long before Nasser, both in the mosque and in politics. A grandfather was a sheik, another an ambassador to Pakistan. Ayman's great uncle was first secretary of the Arab League.

The family mosque is just as active today as it was when Ayman came here in the 1960s. The al-Zawahri's were observant people with a lot of influence in their religious society. But even as a young man, Ayman seems to have taken religion more to heart than others in his family.

Israel's humiliating defeat of Egypt in six days of war in 1967 was a blow to Nasser and to his country. Ayman al-Zawahri and his friends were just coming of age, young Egyptians with strong ideas about where their country was going.

When Islamic militants get arrested in Egypt, they turn to the one lawyer who will defend them. Montasser al Zayat is the Perry Mason of jihad warriors. He rejects their violence but respects their rights and often their cause. He was both a lawyer and a friend to al-Zawahri. The motto on his door is from the Koran: "No rule but God's rule."

The university of Cairo was awash with young people seeking an identity in the late 1960s. Their mood was anti-Israel and pro-Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood was especially popular, finding recruits among impressionable students. Ayman al-Zawahri was one of them.

Nasser brutally suppressed the Islamists. Even today the university is under constant control of riot squads.

For the young al-Zawahri, it was Islamic spring when Nasser died in 1970. Anwar Sadat took power. He promised the fundamentalists political freedom. Sadat thought the Muslim Brotherhood would help him keep power.

Fatal miscalculation

It was a fatal miscalculation. In a quiet Cairo neighbourhood, a retired Egyptian ambassador takes tea. Hussein Amin's first posting was to Canada under Diefenbaker, but he's been everywhere since. He was also able to watch Sadat develop his cozy relationship with the Islamic militants. It didn't last long.

"They thought themselves a state within a state, that they can deal with Sadat and the existing regime as equals," Amin says. "I suppose Ayman al-Zawahri saw that period, and his beliefs were moulded during that time thanks to Sadat's support for Islamic current."

In 1979, Anwar Sadat rocked the Islamic world when he made peace with Israel. The Washington-brokered Camp David accord was hailed as a great success. Sadat was considered a statesman who put the prosperity of his country ahead of all grievances with Israeli leader Menachem Begin.

U.S. President Jimmy Carter beamed, but it was far from the happiest moment for the Islamists of Egypt. For them, this was a sellout to Israel and America. The Muslim Brotherhood was the loudest voice condemning Sadat. But by the late 1970s, the movement was morphing into something more sinister. The brotherhood was on the street. Numerous small cells of activists went underground plotting against Sadat. Ayman al-Zawahri was one of them.

"Ayman al-Zawahri was one of those people who wanted to revolt against the government and implement Islamic Shariah law. From that time on, Zawahri was working secretly," says lawyer Montasser al Zayat.

Al-Zawahri finished his studies and interned as a surgeon at a public hospital. He encountered first-hand the poverty of his city, and his resolve hardened. So did Sadat's. Sadat arrested fundamentalists in the thousands, most without charges. Al-Zawahri watched all of this with anger and loathing.

General Nabawy Ismael was Sadat's minister of the interior and responsible for arresting the young militants and interrogating them. He took the task very seriously. In return, they once tried to kill him with machine guns.

"When they saw me in the balcony, they opened fire," Ismael says.

Sadat always had General Ismael close by. The general believed he had arrested enough militants to protect the presidency. But he was wrong. On October 6, 1981, Sadat attended an anniversary ceremony for the Yom Kippur War. It was his last day of life.

"I was beside him," Ismael says. "Really, I was expecting by feeling, not in four months, but by feeling and analysing the situation, that this day would not pass. And that's why I warned him the day before that I'm worried and anxious about tomorrow."

In one of the most shocking events of their history, Egyptians saw their president assassinated on live TV. The killers had cleverly infiltrated the tight security. Sadat actually spoke to the lead gunman.

"When these guys began to open fire on him, he pushed away from him and stand speaking with the boy, 'Don't be mad. What are you doing? Don't be mad!'" Ismael recalls.

Sadat had tried to control the movement he had unleashed and it killed him.

"He supported all that thinking that he will by this gain their sympathy and full support," says former ambassador Hussein Amin. "And [he] couldn't make the genie go back into the bottle. Too big for him or for his regime."

Mass Arrests

In the days following Sadat's murder, the regime arrested hundreds of Islamists. During one of their court hearings, they tried to show foreign journalists evidence of their torture. But at this particular session, something else happened. A once quiet surgeon stepped into the international spotlight for his first appearance.

"We are free. The real Islamic front against Zionism, communism and imperialism," Ayman al-Zawahri yelled at the court from his cell.

Ayman al-Zawahri emerged as a leader. He'd already spent 14 months in an Egyptian prison by this point and the effect on him was obvious. But Ayman al-Zawahri spoke English. He was well educated and he knew how to get attention.

"They hanged us over the edge of the doors with our hands tied at the back. There they arrested the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the sons in a trial to put the psychological pressure over these innocent prisoners," al-Zawahri told a reporter.

Al Zayat says al-Zawahri had only a small role in the assassination of Anwar Sadat. "His role was a minor one. He only supplied the group with weapons. His importance was clear when security discovered his relationship with a group within the army."

When the police discovered al-Zawahri might know military people in the movement, General Ismael became very interested. The general interrogated al-Zawahri in person.

"I met him," Ismael says. "That was the first time. It was really calm and very shameful. He speak to me and his eyes down, not vulgar. He's well bred. I said to him, Ayman, you are a man of good family and I don't imagine why you put yourself in this situation with the people like that. You are well bred, have a good situation, a doctor, respected man, respected family. Why you put yourself with some people like that in a legal situation and legal operations against your country? Why you do it? He don't answer."

Al-Zawahri later talked a lot about how people were being tortured inside the jail. Ismael denied that. "He always say that to stop their confessions in front of the court, to say that means that I said that because I was under pressure, something like that," Ismael says.

"We have up here many cases of permanent disabilities as you are seeing," al-Zawahri told a reporter at the time.

"He was tortured in prison," Amin says. "As a matter of fact, he was so much tortured that the authorities would bring in suspects and show them Ayman al-Zawahri and say this is what will happen to you if you don't confess or tell on others, etcetera. His attachment to Islam becomes greater. His dislike for people who thought all government or he thought behind the present Egyptian regime. This kind of hatred would grow. And he would swear or resolve on revenge."

Afghanistan

After he was released from prison, al-Zawahri left Egypt and eventually went to Afghanistan. The Afghan war was the Woodstock of Islamic freedom fighters. Thousands of Arab men found their calling there. Al-Zawahri was a warrior and a doctor. His family was proud of him.

"I have to thank God that someone of our family has left the luxury life," his uncle Mafous says. "He leaves the treasure they all want, that people are running after, to live in a place like Afghanistan, to help and treat people, poor people in need of him."

Al-Zawahri also made a very important friend. Osama bin Laden had come to build roads. After the war, the two men were mature, seasoned fighters, no longer young radicals. They focused their rage on America. Al-Zawahri merged his al Jihad organization with bin Laden's. They jointly announced the world Islamic front against Crusaders and Jews. Al-Zawahri provided experience. Bin Laden had the money. They formed a perfect partnership of hate.

"I believe that Ayman al-Zawahri is the brains of bin Laden, he is the brains. Ayman al-Zawahri may not be a great spokesman, but he is a great planner. He can affect the people around him very much," al Zayat says.

"They can teach themselves [about terrorism] Osama teach him and Ayman teach him. They complete their information, their knowledge, complete each other," Ismael says.

That completion saw its most spectacular achievement on Sept. 11, 2001.

Public meetings are against the law in Egypt. President Mubarak has kept a state of emergency for 20 years. The Labour party is a cover for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now muted but still outlawed. Repressing politics just makes descent more rabid.

"All the people wants that to free the Holy Land in Palestine and Egypt and Jerusalem. We don't know what Jerusalem did to us. We don't know what it is. It is a sacred place to us. We have to fight and even to kill the Jews," Mafous says. "We don't accept to kill any Americans or anyone in the world who is, who doesn't make any crime against us." But he adds, if Americans do make crimes against Islam, "I have to kill them."

Converts to militancy

This poisonous atmosphere now spreading through the Middle East infects more converts to militancy every day. There's little else for young people here with no future and a lot of resentments. But General Ismael says the regime bears no responsibility for creating Ayman or any other militant.

"No. The regime, does the regime told him to leave your job as a doctor and good family and to go to join these people and to plan for destroying and the killing?" Ismael asks. "Does the regime do this? Does you think that peace process that Sadat has done deserve that these people do that? I imagine that any people, right people have, would mind, don't like peace? Do you think that?"

"The only remedy to their fanaticism is to try to deal with their, with their economic and social problems. And a political problems, too, to give them more freedom to air their complaints and grievances," Amin says.

A doctor and a poet turns into a cold-hearted killer. Al-Zawahri's life experiences now common, Mubarak's police have arrested tens of thousands of Islamists since al-Zawahri left. Many have fled to the desert.

"If they, Ayman al-Zawahri and Osama bin Laden, die under these circumstances, there are hundreds present and hundreds will continue to have hatred for Americans and the West. They will try to do all they can to destroy their interests and destroy their power," al Zayat says.

Ayman al-Zawahri is a product of his time and place and so are his disciples.

"We are continuing our jihad until the victory over Islam and we are calling the whole people in the whole world. Where is democracy? Where is freedom? Where are human rights? Where is justice? We will never forget. We will never forget," al-Zawahri once said.

Al-Zawahri was indicted by the United States for his alleged role in planning the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. offered a $25-million reward for his capture.

It is believed that al-Zawahri fled into the mountains of Afghanistan soon after the attacks. It is believed that his wife and three daughters were killed during the U.S. bombing campaign that followed. There are reports that he subsequently married the two widows of a senior al-Qaeda leader who was killed in Afghanistan.

He appeared on a videotape, along with Osama bin Laden, broadcast on al-Jazeera in September 2003, showing both men walking through the mountains and sitting down beside a stream.